VDH simply won’t accept the reality:
A controversial and costly war continues, in part so as to give Arab Muslims the sort of freedom the West takes for granted; but at precisely the time that the public increasingly is tired of Middle Eastern madness. In short, America believes that the entire region is not worth the bones of a single Marine.
It isn’t. Give the Arab Muslims democracy and they’ll vote in the jihad. Dependably. This is easily verified fact. The utter stupidity of the neocons and their idiotic World Democratic Revolution is likely going to be revealed this summer, when the Turkish military stages its fourth post-Ataturk military coup in order to prevent Turkish democracy from bringing the Islamist government chosen by the will of the people to power.
For once, the Democrats in Congress are correct. The war in Iraq is over, done, kaput. The secular jihad for democracy is a failure, as it was always bound to be.
And it should be clear to even those who still support the war that it does not have the support of most of the American people, so it can’t be fought successfully even if it was a good idea. I don’t see it as a complete disaster, though, at least the concept of democracy has taken a pretty serious credibility hit around the globe, and pragmatist Republicans have all but self-eviscerated themselves by demonstrating how inherently self-destructive it is for conservatives to follow their lead.
Finally, the war has also given strong winds to the anti-immigration movement, which Romney admitted yesterday is the most powerful issue in politics today, despite the media doing its best to sweep it under a rug of bipartisan accord.
Now, Bane and the gung ho brigade are correct in one sense, there will very likely be a serious, trans-global war with the jihad one day; this present conflict will be accounted a mere skirmish leading up to it. But the time to fight it is not now, as it would have been far better to get the immigration issue sorted out and wait for events in Europe to create the environment for the sort of alliance between the secularists and Christendom that is capable of winning such a war.
We haven’t seen anything yet, on either side. I fully expect big bombs in big cities, ethnic and religious cleansing on a much larger scale than in Bosnia and significantly more excitement than anyone intelligent would like to see. By jumping the gun in the hopes of establishing a secular beachhead in the Middle East, the Commander-in-Chief has put us in a worse position than we would have been had he instead begun more circumspect preparations for the coming global conflict.
UPDATE: An interesting perspective. I don’t think the goals of the neocons were achievable in any event, but it’s an interesting read nonetheless:
Iraq is America’s Valmy. America’s generals have been checked by a form of war that they did not prepare for and do not understand. They spent the years following the 1991 Gulf War mastering a system of war without thinking deeply about the ever changing nature of war. They marched into Iraq having assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like the wars of the past. Those few who saw clearly our vulnerability to insurgent tactics said and did little to prepare for these dangers.